The New Frontiers Open Test has just started! And we invite everyone to join this open test - hurry up to be the first who checks out all the great things Snowforged Team has prepared for you: new NPC faction, Rings system, PvP mode, ships, weapons, mining system, tasks, pirate fleets, detachments, recall system, ship model progression and more - read the full list of changes here. Open up the door to endless adventures and explore all the seven Rings of Starfall Tactics Galaxy!
No keys required - the test is open to everyone! To start playing Starfall Tactics follow these instructions:
Register on starfalltactics.com
Download Starfall Tactics launcher here.
Install Launcher - it will download the game client. Remember, that the game is not available for x32 systems during tests.
Push the "Play" button and start playing Starfall Tactics!
Join in the discussion with other Commanders at our Forum and on Discord Channel
New to Starfall Tactics? Check this short guide out!
Got troubles or want to report something? Use #help & #bugreport Discord channel, create a topic on the forum or send a letter to support@snowforged.com!
So, what's new?
What's new? Well, there are a lot of things to check:
New PvP mode - Domination
Custom games
New recipes
New tasks
New ships - battlecruisers
Weapons
Party system for the MMO mode
Recall system which allows you to warp in additional ships on the Galaxy map
The first neutral faction - Mineworkers
Ship model progression
Rebalance for special modules, shields, armor, weapons, layouts and hull characteristics.
Reworked pirate fleets
Rings system
Equipment quality system
Reworked detachments
Cool quest rewards
Special fleet abilities for the global map (to be announced in the next WIP!)
New visual ship customization abilities
And various improvements, designed to make your playtime even more enjoyable!
And that's not the full list of all the great things we've prepared for you - full patch notes will be available later.
See you in Starfall Tactics!

Hi,
I am working on a project where I'm trying to use Forward Plus Rendering on point lights. I have a simple reflective scene with many point lights moving around it. I am using effects file (.fx) to keep my shaders in one place. I am having a problem with Compute Shader code. I cannot get it to work properly and calculate the tiles and lighting properly.
Is there anyone that is wishing to help me set up my compute shader?
Thank you in advance for any replies and interest!

I am animator by hand, and i am doing game animation for at least 8 years so far. During the last 2 years, i came with a idea for game and maybe some day, i want to start indie game company. As i am thinking to start game company, i am also thinking what kind of value i can give to the company. For example, am experience in animation,sales(I was selling web development services, before i jumped to gaming), bit of rigging- just not for production, i am learning on the side as well. The rest of the gaming production, like modeling, concept art, texturing, i am total noob or to say better, i am no near interest to do modeling for example, don't have such a patience to do it. But before characters and things are made for animating, what the hell i am would do?
Also, what is the ideal size of the founding team of a game company? Positions to be filled mostly are, Concept artist, Modeler/Texture artist, programmer, animator-rigger. And later would need more people to join, like more animators, programmers, sound, fx,etc.
And lastly, do i need to have something,like a prototype, to show people and get them interest, or should i ask someone i know, for skill that i lack, for example, Modeling would be great, texturing and rigging, and to start all together from scratch?

Hi there!The game we are currently working on - TERRORHYTHM (TRRT) supports the custom music mode! You are allowed to upload any mp3 track to play it.This is one of the most important features. Take a look!
If you like it, please add this game to your Steam wishlist!Game Steam pageGame Site

Player Panel DOMEN KONESKI
I’ve implemented a system where adding new types of armor and skins is now easy. All you have to do is add appropriate mesh, name it correctly, create a prefab, set correct layers and add a custom script which resolves everything (from icons, number of skins, to item bonuses armor has).
Items will have shared sprites as well, meaning two different items have a shared sprite, allowing us to create more world items that can drop from various mobs.
junk armor
Loot tables reworked DOMEN KONSEKI
Items now have a world drop chance. If their drop rate is > 0% then this item can be used in our new loot table system. You can define loot tables via our in-house solution. Next thing that needs to be done is applying loot table callback when lootable events occur: you kill a critter or an enemy, looting crates, mining and resource gathering.
loot tables
Algorithm that selects an item is straightforward. Gather all items and their drop chances in a list, then sort them from lowest to highest item chances and then start evaluating their drops by using Unity’s Random.value.
public static T SelectItem<T>(List<GenericSelectedItem<T>> items)
{
items.Sort();
for (int i = 0; i < items.Count; i++)
if (UnityEngine.Random.value <= items[i].Chances)
return items[i].Item;
return default(T);
}
Reworking DeepEnd and Buzzard ANDREJ KREBS
I have reworked the models for the Buzzard helicopter and Deepend submarine. We decided to make them a bit more compact and the models were divided, so they will be built in the game by adding pieces of them to a frame.
DeepEnd submarine
Buzzard helicopter
High tier armor sketch and model ANDREJ KREBS
I also reworked the high tier armor for the player. Based on Mito’s sketches I modeled a metal armor that is ornamented with several crystals. I will add some more versions, that will be available as skins.
metal armor with crystals
Floatlands music: Reveal DOMEN KONESKI
“Reveal” is one of the first tracks I made for Floatlands. The bouncy modulated toy piano sounds in the beginning represent your clumsy first steps that are easing you into another long and deep synth swelling that feels like the airy lands of the game. A deep breath of awe before you continue your venture through those lands.
More about Floatlands:
Discord
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Back around 2006 I spent a good year or two reading books, articles on this site, and gobbling up everything game dev related I could. I started an engine in DX10 and got through basics. I eventually gave up, because I couldn't do the harder things.
Now, my C++ is 12 years stronger, my mind is trained better, and I am thinking of giving it another go.
Alot has changed. There is no more SDK, there is evidently a DX Toolkit, XNA died, all the sweet sites I used to go to are 404, and google searches all point to Unity and Unreal.
I plainly don't like Unity or Unreal, but might learn them for reference.
So, what is the current path? Does everyone pretty much use the DX Toolkit? Should I start there? I also read that DX12 is just expert level DX11, so I guess I am going DX 11.
Is there a current and up to date list of learning resources anywhere? I am about tired of 404s..

Hi all. My project is coming along wonderfully, and am starting to consider alpha deployment, and would like your advice.
My project need access to 10,000 small PNG image files at runtime, each is only a few kilobytes each, which during development I used to load in directly from a fixed path on my HDD whenever one was needed (obviously not a solution for go-live), using something like this:
img = new WriteableBitmap(new BitmapImage(new Uri(@screenshotsPath + filename)));
The image would then be blitted onto a buffer screen, etc. etc. At a time, a few dozen would be being used.
Now I'm thinking about deployment, and also when I produce an update to my app, there could be more images to add to the folders. So I'm considering the best way of a) deploying the images to the user as part of the project, and b) how to most easily handle updates to the app, whereby more images will be added.
I have just experimented with adding them all as a Resource (!). This inflated the exe from 10mb to 100mb (not a major problem), increased the compile time from 3 secs to 30 secs (annoying), increased RAM usage from 500mb to 1.5gb (not a major problem either), but means that it solves my fixed directory issue, distribution issue, and update issue, simply by having the files all stuck into the executable. Here's the new code I'm using:
img = BitmapFactory.FromResource("Shots/" + filename);
The next thing I was going to try was to mark them as Content > Copy if Newer. This would resolve the executable size and RAM usage (and also the directory issue as well), however it seems that I'd need to highlight them all, and move them from Resource to Content. As an up-front job this isn't too bad, but as I add new images to the project, I'll need to go in and do this every time, which gets annoying, as the VS2015 default is Resource. Also, I'm not sure how this would work in terms of updates. Would something like ClickOnce deployment recognise new PNGs and install them to the users?
I also have 3,000 ZIP files (~500kb each) which also need deploying and updating in the same way. These are currently read directly from my HDD until I can find a permanent solution for adding these to the project as well.
Can anyone thing of a better way of doing what I'm trying to achieve?
Thanks for any help folks.

Do YOU play Horror Games; if so WHAT is your favourite and WHY?
Hello! I want to develop a Horror Game for PC and Consoles, however, I need to understand WHY people enjoy playing Horror Games.
Here's a list of Questions:
What's your favourite Horror Game and Why?
What environment scares YOU the most?
What Creature/ Enemy scares YOU the most?
Do YOU like Maze's/ Labyrinths?
Do you enjoy Puzzles/ Riddles?
Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read this topic, I appreciate it!

Hi
I have a procedurally generated tiled landscape, and want to apply 'regional' information to the tiles at runtime; so Forests, Roads - pretty much anything that could be defined as a 'region'. Up until now I've done this by creating a mesh defining the 'region' on the CPU and interrogating that mesh during the landscape tile generation; I then add regional information to the landscape tile via a series of Vertex boolean properties. For each landscape tile vertex I do a ray-mesh intersect into the 'region' mesh and get some value from that mesh.
For example my landscape vertex could be;
struct Vtx
{
Vector3 Position;
bool IsForest;
bool IsRoad;
bool IsRiver;
}
I would then have a region mesh defining a forest, another defining rivers etc. When generating my landscape veretexes I do an intersect check on the various 'region' meshes to see what kind of landscape that vertex falls within.
My ray-mesh intersect code isn't particularly fast, and there may be many 'region' meshes to interrogate, and I want to see if I can move this work onto the GPU, so that when I create a set of tile vertexes I can call a compute/other shader and pass the region mesh to it, and interrogate that mesh inside the shader. The output would be a buffer where all the landscape vertex boolean values have been filled in.
The way I see this being done is to pass in two RWStucturedBuffer to a compute shader, one containing the landscape vertexes, and the other containing some definition of the region mesh, (possibly the region might consist of two buffers containing a set of positions and indexes). The compute shader would do a ray-mesh intersect check on each landscape vertex and would set the boolean flags on a corresponding output buffer.
In theory this is a parallelisable operation (no one landscape vertex relies on another for its values) but I've not seen any examples of a ray-mesh intersect being done in a compute shader; so I'm wondering if my approach is wrong, and the reason I've not seen any examples, is because no-one does it that way. If anyone can comment on;
Is this a really bad idea ?
If no-one does it that way, does everyone use a Texture to define this kind of 'region' information ?
If so - given I've only got a small number of possible types of region, what Texture Format would be appropriate, as 32bits seems really wasteful.
Is there a common other approach to adding information to a basic height-mapped tile system that would perform well for runtime generated tiles ?
Thanks
Phillip

I'm searching a more high resolution GeoTiff of http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-raster-data/10m-natural-earth-1/ since these are not sufficient if you need to zoom in...does anybody know a good source (free/paid) ? Thanks.

Hi everyone!
I am from an indie studio that has received funding for our concept and is ready to create the next generation 2D Pokemon-inspired MMORPG called Phantasy World. This ad is for a volunteer position but hopefully will transition into something more. Our vision is to create a game that draws inspiration from the series but is dramatically different in both aesthetics and gameplay as the work would be our own.
We are hoping that you can help us make this a reality and are looking for game developers familiar with the unreal engine and would be happy to work on a 2D top down game. Sprite artists are also welcome as we are in desperate need of talented artists! Join our discord and let's have a chat! https://discord.gg/hfDxwDX
Here's some of our in game sprites for playable characters while moving around the game world! Hope to see you soon!

I'm not a beginner per se, but I don't see an introduce yourself section, so I figured this was the best place for this.
I'm an Indie Game dev, I have had one finished game place well in a Jam and consider myself primarily a writer. I also have a YouTube channel where I review mostly game jam entries for the various game jams held throughout the year, but I enjoy playing all kinds of indie games regardless.
If you would like to see some of the games and jams I've covered, please feel free to check out my channel
Here's a link to my latest vid, this game was STELLAR
EDIT* I see now I should have put this in Announcements, sorry guys!
.

So I've decided to make a multiplayer mod for dark souls, the idea was to cut a lot out of the game and make a multiplayer 5v5 or 3v3 with Stat and Item presets so the player could just go in with out the steep learning curve.
I have no experience what so ever. But a lot of time and patience.

My best day-to-day tool will surprise you !
Hi everyone, i'm super happy to be back and i'm really sorry if it took some time. I decided to rework how we will post information to now include video to provide a more visual interaction. The life a indie game developer is hard, so any tool you can find to save time, produce faster, improve your workflow and enhance your skill is always welcome. I'm going to share with you some of the tool that make my life easier.
Make sure to tell us what are your favorite tool in the comment below
Not in the mood of reading ? Watch the full episode
Tool for tablet owner
The first plugin you should look into if you own a table is LazyNemuziPro. Your tablet already cost you a lot, and I personally really enjoy having one because it's much better for creating sketch and concept art, it's super precise for texture editing/creating. It work well in substance to paint your asset and it's essential for any zbrushing work you need. That said, having the right pressure feeling is hard and you often end up with having jaggy line or not enough pressure range to achieve the effect you are expecting. I have a tendency to push hard on my pen and making my Wacom less sensitive help, but not much. This tool will not only improve your overall skill by smoothing out the pressure and the line itself, removing all unwanted movement to break that professional looking smooth line. The tool also come with a tons of usefull tool such as parallel line, ellipse, perspective, fish eye perspective, isometric etc. Really awesome tool, Wacom should provide something like that in the first place, but they don't so grab this tool :)à
Tools for photoshop
You spend a lot of time in photoshop, so why not improving you tool set in there. Really simple Brush box plugin will allow you to better visualize and organize your brush by assigning folder, color, favorite, etc. Simple drop and drag operation and better management make it quicker to find the brush you need.
I also really enjoy Coolorus which replace the color swatch of photoshop by providing you a much better and natural color circle that Corel Draw user are more use to. It help you save and manage custom swatches, it allow you to work your color based on lighting and shade, you can limit your gammut to a lesser range so you can work in a certain color palette. It's a very simple tool that will help you everyday.
All those tool would be worthless without a good set of brushes to make your art. There is one fabulous artist Roman Melentyev that sell over creativemarket an impressive brush collection. Have a look and find the one that are right for you https://creativemarket.com/RainbowWings I picked up the Cocept Artist III bundle that come with many of his brushes and i'm really pleased with them. They work well. I especially enjoy the Markers which I like to draw with. Those are my go to for sketch.
Tool for coder
This tool is probably the most interesting one. If you are a coder, you need it. It's been my favorite recent discovery because it made me save literally 1 week on a single asset. I buy asset on Unity Asset Store that I find interesting, many are of very high quality and created by expert developer, sometimes from reknown studio. There is no reason why not to use them. That said, once you include them in your game, most of the time it require tweaking and modification so that it perform the way you want for your game. I see most of the asset as a starting point that you need to improve. The best practice when you do change the behavior of an asset or that you want to link it to your need you try to stay out of the original script and you push/pull data out of it. That said, you eventually end up having no choice but to directly modify one, either because it's just way easier and faster or because you have no other choice. Once you start doing this, you are creating a barrier between your work and the ability to update the asset which would overwrite your code. Manually replacing and rebuilding an asset each and every update is time consuming, annoying and long. With the tool call Code Compare all the thinking is done immediately and you can update your script with a couple of click. We have been improving this asset for a few month and we work with the original developer to get more feature into the asset and after a long period and skipping many update we had no choice to update. We estimated it would took a week since the asset contain like 30 scripts, thousand and thousand of line and we have made important modification in at least half of them. The most recent update was mostly a full rewrite. With this tool, we were able to accomplish the updated in less than a day and everything was working flawlessly. Check out the video or the software website for more information.
The big tool that cost money
If you have a little budget, take a look at the Indie licence of Allegorithmic. Substance are THE thing right now and their tool are amazing. It's a well known tool and it's worth it. If you don't have enough money, you can at least make use of CrazyBump, an old application that create normal map for your texture, very sweet, but honestly Bitmap2Material from Allegorithmic does a much better job. If you are looking for a LOD tool, i especially like Polygon Cruncher, but it's pricy. Unity asset store offer you cheaper solution that does all the naming and compression for you. ZBrush doesn't need any introduction if you have a fat wallet. For 3D Modeling we use Lightwave3D. This is simply the BEST 3d software you can get. The quality of the render may be not the best, but it come really complete with all the tool you need for animation and modeling without the need of buying anything else and the software cost less than any Autodesk solution.
Made In Canada - Un petit mot d'introduction en français !

Hi.
I'm kind of late to this party but I thought I would ask anyway as I haven't found a concrete answer.
When creating a game engine, when should you choose one methodology over another (more specifically OOP and DOD)?
Which areas benefit from DOD?
Which areas benefit from OOP?
Do people typically mix multiple methodologies throughout a project?
I.e. certain sub-systems created in one, and others in the another?
DOD - Data Oriented Design
OOP - Object Oriented Design
Pretty simple
Thanks

Kepuh's Island is Multiplayer 3D Survival Game where you survive on the Kepuh's Islands, confronting challenges that are not only other players but also bosses, and even the environment itself.
We have a lowpoly faster battle-royale idea, where about 12 players on the map fighting for survival! Also adding some more things into that style such as bosses around the map giving you abilities and much more such as vehicles, weapons, skins, etc...
Now we are on cartase which is a crowdfunding online which purpose is to raise funds for the development of the game. Come and be part of this development.
Link for Cartase: https://www.catarse.me/kepuhsisland?ref=project_link
We post updates and trailers on
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pcqnhastudios
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pacoquinhastudios/ Site: http://pacoquinhastudios.com.br
If you could check out it would be great
Thnks
Some images:

COMPANY AND THE PROJECT
We are an indie game studio consisted of professional and skilled artists who are dedicated indie enthusiasts. Our current project is INT, developed on Unity Engine 5 for platforms Windows, Linux, and Mac. We are recruiting a few more members on the team to finalize our playable demo.
INT is a 3D Sci-fi RPG with a strong emphasis on story, role playing, and innovative RPG features such as randomized companions. The focus is on the journey through a war-torn world with fast-paced combat against hordes of enemies. The player must accomplish quests like a traditional RPG, complete objectives, and meet lively crew members who will aid in the player's survival. Throughout the game you can side and complete missions through criminal cartels, and the two major combatants, the UCE and ACP, of the Interstellar Civil War.
Please note that all of our current positions are remote work. You will not be required to travel.
For more information about us, follow the links listed below.
INT Official website
Steam Greenlight
IndieDB page
Also follow social media platforms for the latest news regarding our projects.
Facebook
Twitter
TALENTS NEEDED
Website Administrator
3D Modeler
3D Animator
Unity Engine Programmer
REVENUE - SHARE
This is the perfect opportunity to get into the game development industry. We have the majority of our art assets completed and are marching towards our crowd-funding campaign, currently planned for mid 2018.
We are unable to offer wages or per-item payments at this time. However revenue-sharing from crowd-funding is offered to team members who contribute 15-20 hours per week to company projects, as well as maintain constant communication and adhere to deadlines. Your understanding is dearly appreciated.
TO APPLY
Please send your Cover Letter, CV, Portfolio (if applicable), and other relevant documents/information to this email: JohnHR@int-game.net
Thank you for your time! Please feel free to contact me via the email provided should you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you!
John Shen
HR Lead
Starboard Games LLC

Greetings!
The third devlog is a video demonstration of what I have been worked on in the past several weeks. So, here is what the gameplay looks like in the current state of development:
There is still a lot of work to do and release date is not exactly defined, but Steam page for the game has been already set:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/803850/Pixelpunk_XL/

Too often nowadays we see the need for a driving narrative or gripping plot not necessarily overlooked, but perhaps glossed over or replaced with cutting-edge graphics or revolutionary game design. Let me ask you a question. What is going to stick with an audience more? Stunning graphics, or a story that hits them like a freight train? The best gun-handling in a game they've ever experienced, or a plot that shakes them to their core?
This is what I'm looking to deliver. Complex stories, gripping dialogue, and detailed descriptions are all crucial to a story driven game. Even when the story takes a seat on the back burner, anything revolving around dialogue needs to be carefully tailored. If this has at all resonated with you, I encourage you to consider hiring me as a writer for your game.
EXPERIENCE:
As far as writing for particular video games, I've written for two independent, released (one is currently soon-to-be-released, within a month.) games, one named "SpaceDweller" which is a turn-based tactical fighting game. (http://store.steampowered.com/app/599510/SpaceDweller/) For this, I wrote the entirety of the lore behind the game, all of it able to be found after destroying enemies and taking form as ship logs. This was a great project for me to get started as a writer in this field. It was small enough to not overwhelm me, yet enough content to give me a proper job. I did well enough for the owner to let me use him as a recommendation. "Uplinked is a very efficient, responsible and creative writer. I had the pleasure of working with him." Unlike me, Roman is a man of few words, but it gets the point across. I deliver.
The other game I've written for is a contract a very recently finished, and it's a skill-based train racing game which will be on mobile devices. Currently, it's in its final steps of being released on the market. I wrote in all of the achievements, and a small amount of dialogue that takes place as prompts for the player, and as a space filler between rounds.
Outside of game writing, I have five years of serious writing under my belt, all looking to improve my skills. I love writing, I always have, and the interest to pursue it professionally was a rather recent development. The love stems from me writing a book for fun when I was seven. This 'book' was about a family of penguins that went on a series of adventures, and it opened up my love for the fantasy genre. I'm currently working on an actual book I hope to get published one day. It's actually a theme you don't see all that often; Steampunk. It has been a wonder creating the world, make of floating islands and traditional sailing ships turned into colossal airships, and I'm happy to share it with anyone who's interested.
SKlLLS:
I'm timely and efficient, always looking to work with deadlines as they add a sense of urgency and I work well with pressure.
I'm affordable, I'm not looking to get rich off of writing. It's something I enjoy, but I'm currently just a student. I won't work without pay, in part because this isn't an easy service to provide, but it also shows that it's an investment that developers are willing to invest in.
Simply put, I’m good at writing. I’ve included the link to my website at the bottom of this pitch and you can find my contact info and some writing samples so you can see for yourself.
I’m also available for proofreading. This goes especially for people who have a good grasp on English, and have translated their game themselves, but want someone to iron it out.
I can also do status updates and blog posts as well, providing a fanbase with information in a clear and readable fashion, while also keeping it light and fun to read.
STRENGTHS:
I have a wide variety of skills that I can use while I’m writing for you. My best strength is in descriptions, (item descriptions to be specific) and story-telling, but I’m great with dialogue as well.
CONTACT:
I’d love it if you would email me at uplinkedxd@gmail.com.
Discord is also another great way to contact me and tends to be a little bit faster. My tag is Uplinked #6179
My website: https://uplinkedxd.wixsite.com/wordforge

Eight Hours by Troll Purse
Supernatural Investigation Horror Game
Jump right into it from either itch.io or gamejolt!
Take on the role of Bob Norm, paranormal investigator. Begin your night locked in a haunted house. It is your job to capture apparitions residing within the abode. But, not all is as it seems. Something sinister lurks within the house at night. Can you survive Eight Hours?
Eight Hours is the horrifying debut game from Troll Purse. It features you as Bob Norm, a paranormal investigator. At your request, the owner has locked you in the house for the duration of the investigation. Now, it is up to you to discover the secrets of the haunting. You have eight hours - good luck and Godspeed.
See more at the official game webpage. Continue to explore more and get the download links to play today!
Use Supernatural Detection Equipment to Hunt Haunts
Explore A Seemingly Normal Haunted House
You can get the game from either itch.io or gamejolt!

Hello,
I do 2D graphics and animation. I would like to collaborate with a programmer, preferably:
2D, small scope (first), PC,(itch, steam) We both decide what we want to make, and share potential profits
My pixel blog/portfolio: https://bahototh.blogspot.fi/

Independent developer Fishing Cactus brings their charming new programming game to Steam
Mons, Belgium, February 14, 2018 - independent game developer Fishing Cactus (Epistory - Typing Chronicles, 2016) announced today that Algo Bot, a pan-galactic coding-based adventure puzzle game, is available on Steam for $9.99 USD.
In the rich single-player story campaign, Algo Bot meets PAL, a cantankerous and aloof line manager, and Gemini, the cheerfully eccentric shipboard computer. When a routine recycling job goes horribly wrong, Algo Bot and this unlikely band of heroes must work together to save the sleeping colonists on board the Europa.
Algo Bot is a unique futuristic adventure puzzle game, delivering a one-of-a-kind programming gameplay experience, teaching basic programming concepts in a fun and entertaining way.
Algo Bot’s features include:
A bittersweet story with two lovable heroes
Over 40 programming puzzles set in 5 unique environments
Easy to understand for beginners, but difficult enough for puzzle enthusiasts
Play with various programming concepts
Backtrack to already cleared levels to optimize your solutions
Stunning 3D graphics
The British Touch: we’ve teamed up with Epistory’s writer, Joseph J Clark, to give Algo Bot a light storyline with a touch of British humor
Algo Bot is available now on Steam for $9.99 USD in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Polish and Italian http://bit.ly/2Due9Ou